Mark 10:32-34 - They will kill him, three days later He will rise

10:32

Jesus and the disciples were on their way to Jerusalem. The disciples were astonished. Why was this? It was because, despite their seeming incomprehension of Jesus’ talk of suffering and resurrection, they knew that there was increasing danger from the religious leaders. So why go to Jerusalem, the centre of the religious leadership, surely it was asking for trouble? “Those who followed” are probably various hangers on, people who followed Jesus, but were not part of the close group of disciples.

10:33,34

Jesus took the twelve aside to explain to them what was going to happen. There will be times in our lives when God forewarns us of things that are going to happen before they do so. Now we can obviously go too far, expecting God to tell us every little detail of everything, or imagining God has told us all sorts of things when He has done nothing of the sort. So we do need to be sensible, but even so we should not be closed to the idea of God, on occasion, giving us advance notice. Jesus told the disciples what was going to happen. He would be handed over to the religious leaders and be condemned to death by them. Then He would be handed over to the Romans, they would mock Him, spit on Him, beat Him, and finally kill Him. Then Jesus will rise from the dead. Note that “bad things” happening can be part of God’s plan, but it is not the end of God’s plan. We are not told what the disciples reaction was, but going by their past record they would have appreciated little, and the next section would seem to confirm that this was again the case.